Indigo
by dissolvedgirl101
Summary: After the 75th Hunger Game Katniss Everdeen was taken by the Capitol. Captured, tortured and turned against the districts, her family were executed, and now she kills on Snow's order. With the codename Indigo, Katniss is the Capitol's newest, dealiest weapon. But what she doesn't know, is one of her 'family' may still be alive. Suspense, gore, and heavy petting to come later.
1. Prologue

My name is Indigo Harvey, a top level assassin working for President Snow. I butcher, torture and shoot his enemies for a mediocre salary, a four room apartment a block from Alaya Square, and the promise that I will not face the same fate. A blanket of scars coat my skin, my heart beats out a constant empty rhythm in my chest.

I used to be Katniss Everdeen, the victor of the 74th & 75th Hunger Games, a symbol of mockery against the capitol and a figurehead for the resistance. The mockingjay. When the force-field above that sticky-hot beach was broken, when I broke it unknowingly with my arrow, I was taken by the capitol and cut and broken and bruised as punishment. They took my family, my baby sister, my mother, my pretend cousin, ended them as an example to those victors who would do the same. _Your namesake is poison. Swallow down our saccharine antidote and do what the Capitol tells you. _I keep a length of my sisters pale blonde hair tied around my pinky finger, a reminder of another life. I hear Gale's voice echo between my eyes whenever I line up an arrow, telling me to shoot straight. I see Snow's face and hit him right between the eyes.

_'Never gamble at cards. You'll lose your last coin.'_

Peeta, his words always so funny, clever, kind, was taken too that day, taken kicking and screaming as he watched them smack a rifle down over my head. Through a dizzy haze I saw his lips, those soft, soft lips that had been so gentle in their caress of mine, contorted with the rage that burned through his eyes. Through that soupy haze, as my head fell limp to the mossy jungle floor that was the last time I saw him.

I'd lost my very last coin.


	2. Cold Comfort

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**A/N: Hello wonderful reading people! So I hope you (yes, you. The one person reading this author's note) enjoyed my prologue and it's suitably mysterious set-up. I'm currently sat at work craving positivity as the bums who phone my IT help-desk have trouble navigating the password reset screen. Which is tediously mind-numbing. So pretty words from pretty people would be greatly appreciated. Thanking you for the favourites and reviews I've received so far, as it really does mean a lot! Hope you all like this one :)**

There was a split in my thumb nail that reached to the cuticle. The skin beneath, dirty and sore, was torn open and had bled a thick, viscous blanket of red over my palm. I scratched between my fingers, where the red had hardened, to cake and flake off in clumps. At my feet, Leigh busied herself with washing my feet down, pulling a thin sterilised needle through a slash across my calf, scraping the dirt from my skin with a thick bristled scrubbing brush. She'd slathered a pink gel over my skin that pricked each pore with a short, sharp sting. A hundred thousand needles boring into me.

_The girl on fire. Always the fucking girl on fire. Couldn't I for once be the girl who swam in a pleasantly refreshing mountain lake, or the girl who ate buckets of lamb stew?_

"Did you manage to get him?" She looked up at me through her thick, curled lashes, gilded silver butterflies shimmering amidst her purple, piled-high hair. She was wearing coloured contacts today, her eyes a burnt, mustard yellow. I gnashed my teeth together as she pulled the last length of thread through my skin. The other stitches were already melting into me, leaving behind blotchy pink welts. "Your attacker, did you get him?"

"Yeah…I shot him through the neck." He'd been crouching over the body of another peacekeeper, a short, thick built woman with a frizzy black. I'd slit her throat, the sticky blood coursing over my fingers to dye her paper white uniform a brilliant scarlet, and watched as a blood bubble burst at her lips while she gurgled out her last breath. Then I'd just waited, steadying my breathing, crouching in the shadows with my bow pointed to the spot I knew where he's be. "He was…he was fast though. Faster than he usually gets them."

I'd been hiding in my shadow for a hundred and thirty five heartbeats when the head peacekeeper of Echam Vector trundled into my vision. Echam was President Snow's minister of agricultural development, a tattooed encyclopaedia of plant knowledge, and his source of Aber berries; the tiny, crystal-like fruits that were dropped into his bubbling glasses of vintage champagne, the ones that gave him those oh-so-well-timed 'heart attacks.' But the berries had run out and Echam knew too much. Snow wanted him dead.

The peacekeeper was mountainous, ambling, but with slim, nimble fingers that quickly clasped and unclasped the twin blades strapped to his hips. He dropped to one knee, eyes darting everywhere but seeing nothing as he fumbled gloved hands at the neck of his fallen comrade. Her blood was seeping out to stain the floor. I watched his back shudder in then out with great wracking breaths as I counted my hundred and thirty fifth heartbeat and took aim at his head.

Leigh tilted her delicately boned face up towards me as her fingers pulled the thread into a knotted loop. The sutchers were slim, tidy, clean, not like so many injuries I'd patched up with jagged, uncoordinated stitching. She smeared the pink gel over the top where tiny jets of smoke issued upwards. In its wake, the cut continued to fade. "What happened Katniss? You're usually such a speedy little thing."

I scrunched up my nose at the memory of him, the weight of him crashing down on top of me as my arrow grazed the top of his ear. _Missed._ Raging, with blood gushing in a frothy stream down his chin, he'd thrown himself towards me to catch my ankle and had pulled, sliding me over the rough granite floor. I'd felt the sandpaper surface scrub pieces from my skin; my bare hands, my cheeks, the strips of skin above my laced boots where my trousers were being pulled upwards. He turned me, hands shackling my wrists, and looked straight into my face.

"Ah, I know you." He was grinning a sickly smile, blood between his teeth. "That district 12 bitch. Katniss was it?" I tried to kick out but he jammed a foot down on my ankle. I heard a crack, felt the bones there shift, hoped it wasn't broken. Pressed so close to me, I could feel the blade at his side bite through the thin cloth of my leggings and tear my skin apart. My eyes watered with the pain of it and his grin widened. "That's right. From the 75th and 75th games. Truth be told I'm much of a fan of yours but it's always good to meet a celebrity."

His fingers strayed higher, one hand still holding my wrists and both feet braced down on my legs. His face was close, too close, breath dry and stinking. Licking his lips he dipped a hand under my shirt and skimmed across the skin there. I squirmed back against the floor, and uselessly wriggled against him. I felt my joints grind further into the floor. He laughed. "Hmm, but you're a firm little thing aren't you? So tight and young. Strange to think there, was ever a baby in here…" He sank lower against me, lips brushing my ear, fingers digging my flesh as they rose and rose higher. When he spoke, his words were barely whisper, though I heard every relished syllable. "And we killed that baby's father."

For that one, stretching moment, I couldn't comprehend what the words meant, each empty sound lost in a sea of sensation. _Urgh, my leg, painful…fuck! Breath disgusting, hasn't brushed his teeth in a century. Did they have toothbrushes a century ago? Weight. Crushing bone. Feet numb. Actually…what, baby? Baby? What Ba…oh. Right. _And only a second after the words had passed his lips I reached forward and bit through his ear.

"AGGGG!" I turned, spat the lump of hot flesh out to the side of me, and pulled at my limbs until there were out of his grasp. He slumped further to the floor, clutching one giant, bear-paw hand to the hole in his head. Blood spilled out over his fingers. His entire frame was shuddering.

_Baby. What's a hole in the head between friends?_

I slid across the floor to where my bow had slipped from its sheath, feeling the cold comfort of steel between my fingers as I held it, loaded an arrow, aimed it at the spot where I'd missed before. I licked my lips, brushed my tongue over my teeth as I stood over him, looking down. I could feel bits of his skin stuck to the roof of my mouth, spongy and sticky against the hard, smooth palate.

"There was no baby. And I'm not Katniss." He was struggling to hold himself up on one elbow, so I quickly bent to unclip the blades from his side and kick them away. I looked him straight in the face, just as he had done with me, and spoke slowly, enunciating each inflection. His bloodshot eyes were seeping with stinging tears.

"My name is Indigo Harvey. I work for Snow who wants your boss dead. But I want him dead too. And I'm sorry but you're just another step for me to achieve that." I ran down the mental list of all the I'd given this little speech to, not knowing any of the names but just seeing the faces_. Brown eyes, blue eyes, black hair, pale skin, freckles, big lips, heart-shaped faces._ Then I saw his eyes, duck-egg blue, always so clear, so perfectly clear in their yearning for me. I saw them, wide and surprised and hungry, as I leaned in to kiss him for the first time. I saw them, dark, bruised, burning, as they watched the peacekeepers drag me away. I saw those eyes as I shot an arrow into the bleeding peacekeepers neck, watched the grip, in his long, gloved fingers loosen. He coughed, spluttered a mouthful a saliva down over his chin, then went completely still.

Leigh's hand on my thigh, her golden-painted fingertips drumming nervously, bought me back to the present. I must've had that glazed, dead-eye stare, because she was pulling on her eyelashes in that way she always did when she was nervous.

"Katniss? What happened?"

"He…" _We killed that baby's father. _"He just got to me. I suppose." She sighed, folded her arms and clocked her tongue in a way that reminded me of Effie, and stood up to her full height, smoothing down the front of her plaid, pink dress. I noticed my legs, stark in their paleness, smoothed and cleaned and free of grime. Only a pale red line, a ghost of a shadow, reminded me of the blade that had sliced into my calf. I stood up too, stretched, and patted Leigh on the very top of her head. She was short, much shorter than my 5 foot 6, and wearing spindly silver heels that gave her walk an unstable feel. Sometimes, I wanted to nudge her with my boot to see if she'd fall over just as easily as I'd predicted, though fear for her paper white limbs snapping in half always stopped me. I didn't mind Leigh, her careful and overwhelming attention to every little aspect of my personal appearance reminded me, achingly, of Cinna. _Just with sillier wigs. _

"Well, as I know that's not fully story of it then I'm just not going to even bother asking. You and your secrets Katniss. Bloody victors. You're all the same." She trotted over to the curtains and threw them open so thick, mid-afternoon sunlight spilled through the glass, colouring the plush, beige carpet a rich orange. Colours flicked at my vision. I rubbed my eyes, only just realising how tired I felt. _So, last time I was in a bed was seven thirty on a Tuesday morning, and it's what? A Thursday now? Friday? Was the city so bright last time I left it? _

"Leigh, if you don't mind, I think I'm just going to go to bed." Bed brought darkness, with no eyes to follow me or colours to spot my vision, a cocoon of satin and silk and fresh, just washed cotton. I pulled off my shirt, undershirt, leaving only my grimy underwear beneath. Leigh didn't raise an eyebrow. She'd seen me after my capture, after my torture, bloodied and unconscious, delivered to her to re-make to 'beauty base zero.' She'd thought it was an impossible task. She still says that.

"Alright then sweetie." I unclipped my bra, dropped it to the floor, as Leigh gathered clothes and holsters and stained weapons from the floor. She held out my shirt on the very tip of her index finger, waggled it in front of me. "And I think this one's for the bonfire. No amount of scrubbing could ever get these ghastly marks out." I mentally grinned at the thought of her, on her knees, with a scrubbing brush in hand, as I made my way to my bedroom. _Never gonna happen_.

I thought of the bluest blue of Peeta's eyes, the arms that had embraced me, the tongue that had set my mouth on fire. I hoped I'd sleep with him tonight.

"Oh, and Leigh…?"

She was poised, one hand on my front door. "Hmmm?"

"Remember, it's Indigo, not Katniss."

She smiled her sad little smile, the painted bow of her lips titled inward. _Poor tragic Katniss. Can't even stomach her name anymore._

"Alright then, Indigo."

She bowed her head, clutched the pile of ragged clothes tighter, and let the door slam behind her as she dipped back into the hallway, swallowing the synthetic hallway light in a cloud of murky grey. I could hear her shoes clip further and further away until the unmistakable hum of the elevator arrived at my floor. A moment, the beeping as buttons were pressed, and the eerie, tinkering laugh of a child in the distance.

I sighed, closed my curtains, and headed into my fabric cocoon.

**A/N: Sooo, what did y'all think? Did you like it? I hope you liked it. I liked a fair amount of my descriptive work but it's not my 'cleanest' piece of writing so to speak. Meh. I'm never happy. But here, at the very bottom of the page, those of you willing to sit through these tedious author's notes shall be rewarded (if you see it as a reward that it…) with a preview of the next chapter. Woop! So here is it, chapter 2, titled, The Way We Weren't:**

'_He was broad, broader than I remembered, with thick, well-muscled arms and filled-out torso showing no vestiges of hunger. His hair was only slightly waved, stylishly dishevelled atop his fine-boned head, a small, smirking smile curving his lips._

_I wanted to run to him, but knew the eyes of every person in the room were watching me._

"_Hello Katniss."_

_I could hear a strangled, sort-of gurgling sound escape my lips, but forced the words past my tongue._

"_It's Indigo. I don't know who this Katniss is."'_


	3. Interlude: Heavy In Your Arms

**A/N: So, to break up the story a bit (I like to…y'know…mix things up) I'm going to be including periodic things like letters to show how truly angsty Katniss has become, and to give you guys a bit more background on the whole piece (Though you'll get your chapter 2, and it's rather sexual you bunch of giant perverts .) Here, in this interlude, Katniss writes to Peeta, the first of many letters planned, and we learn a little more about her life before she became Indigo, just after she was tortured…Please keep coming back y'all as I love to read your thoughts!**

Dear Peeta,

It hurts. I hurt. Every little bit of my skin feels like its flaking, flaking away from the bone and rotting at my feet. They try to touch me, pick me up, stand me tall, sit me down, and each time a new patchwork of bruises erupts from underneath their fingertips. I sit in this same room, every single day, strapped to drips and beeping machines that tick away the hours with rhythmic pulses. Beep, beep, beep. I hear them breathe through the one-way mirrors, try to catch my own eyes in the reflection but see only bruises. I think I might just be one, giant bruise.

Will you come to me?

You used to come to me. I remember your breathing humming against my forehead as the train skirted over the tracks beneath us. I could rest then, rest in your arms. So heavy. I'd wake up, achy with sleep, see your eyelids twitch in the midst of a dream, and slouch off the shower, stripping off my clothes and knowing that you were only a wall away from me. Are you that far from me now? Just a wall between us?

Sometimes I can hear the breathing behind the mirrors change, catch in hurried, hushed whispers, talking of other prisoners locked up between the concrete walls. I hear screams, but jam my nails into the soft pads of my palm to block them out. When the screams grow louder, deeper, I picture your face and sing out a chorus of _la la la _ing. I think that's how you scream, but you should never have to scream. I've done enough screaming for the both of us.

Yesterday it all changed. Their voices grew louder, letting me hear words and syllables through the reflective glass, and when a silver haired doctor came in to see me he clucked his tongue over the state they'd left me in. My skin rippled with pain as their fingers pushed away my hospital gown, the flimsy fabric discarded, ripped, in the corner. I wanted to curl up with it, close my eyes, shut out the clinically white surgery and go back to that cave with you, to dirt and water and body heat. You. I wanted the hunger games back and I hated them for it.

Scrawling this on the wall in blotchy, blue in is hurting my fingers. The pen was dropped by an avox girl, a slim-built blonde with deer-in-headlights eyes, and I'm going to snap it into pieces so they don't find it, punish her for it, cut off more of her body parts. I know they'll wash the wall clean, every little letter scrubbed away, but the part of me that's not entirely damaged, that's not fully scarred, wants you to know I'm here. _I'm still fighting. I hope you are too. _


End file.
